Brett, Horses and Heat

Playing nicely

Monday I watched my cousin's son, Brett.  Joel was much nicer to him today, which was nice to see!  The day was going pretty well and I was feeling good about how things were going.  I managed to get the dishwasher unloaded and loaded again, 2 loads of laundry put away, and keep the house relatively straightened up and still keep all the kids mostly happy!  Vince enjoyed having Brett around and at one point Brett put his arm on Vince and Vince hugged him and said "I just want you to be my best buddy Brett."  Normally Vince refers to Brett as "Joel's friend" so it was nice to see him wanting to be Brett's friend too. We played upstairs, downstairs, and outside.  While we were outside the kids wanted to see the horses which was a little tricky.  I have only 2 hands and 3 kids to watch and 5 horses to keep an eye on.  I fed the horses some hay to occupy them and went to walk the kids thru the gate when I decided this was a really bad idea.  My horses are all good (but they are still animals and much bigger than the children), Vince listens well, but Joel is fearless and will run up to any horse and Brett just isn't used to being around the horses.  So, I let my old mare, Bailey, out in the yard instead.  I figured it was much easier to watch the kids around only 1 horse.  It turns out once Bailey was in the yard none of the kids cared about seeing the horses anymore.  It worked out well for Bailey because she spent the next 2 hours in the yard eating!

Brett helping himself to Vince's apple

Playing outside

When Andy came to pick up Brett I asked him to stay in the house with my kids so I could put Bailey away.  That is when it got a little interesting.  Bailey usually runs right up to me when I call her and if I open the gate she will walk right back into the pasture.  Well, she wasn't totally ready to go back in the pasture and our other old mare, Janie, hates to be away from Bailey.  While I was waiting for Bailey to come to the gate our 3 biggest horses came to the gate and I kept them at bay.  In the meanwhile Janie came running up and I tried to block her, but I quickly could tell she had no plans of stopping until she made it out of the gate.  I decided it was better to get out of her way.  I shut the gate behind her and went to get a lead rope.  I figured if I got Bailey that Janie would follow because she always does.  Well, today she had other plans.  I put Bailey away and had to catch Janie.  Janie doesn't like me.  She has been here since this spring and has never liked me.  I have vaccinated and dewormed her but other than that I don't do anything with her.  She lets the boys pet her if I am not around.  Brad can catch her and pet her.  She just doesn't like me.  Which I say is fine and that I don't care because she keeps Bailey company, but it bugs me a little that she likes everyone but me.  Anyway, Janie didn't let me close enough to catch her but she was so worried that Bailey was "missing" that after a couple minutes she decided running back thru the gate into the pasture wasn't so bad.  I just had to stand there for 2 minutes keeping the boys away from the gate, it doesn't seem like a long time, but the grass in the pasture is significantly shorter than in our yard and those boys follow their stomachs!  I am not sure if Andy saw any of it from the house but I am sure the pregnant lady trying to herd a couple of old mares was entertaining.

Sitting nicely for a picture.  It was hard to pull them around in the yard!

Joel really wanted out!

If all of that wasn't fun enough once Brett and Andy left I realized that our heating system was having some serious issues.  It sounded like a chainsaw was being used in my basement, but it went away when I turned the heat off.  Brad was at his IALP meeting and wouldn't be able to answer his phone until almost 9pm.  It was 4:30 at the time when I was sure we had a problem.  I called my father in law to see what he thought the problem could be.  I really didn't want to have to call someone out if it was something simple.  He agreed that it sounded like an actual problem probably with one of the pumps.  I didn't have the phone number for the guy (Kurt, a friend of Brad's) that works on our boiler.  I sent Brad several texts, but I knew he was busy in meetings all day.  Luckily I had a mutual friend's number and was able to track Kurt down.  He was so nice and was at our house with in the hour and figured out what the problem was.  The good news is that he figured out the problems and can order parts to get it all fixed and we still have heat downstairs.  The bad news is that we have no heat upstairs.  It sounds worse than it really is, upstairs has been slightly colder than usual but only by a couple degrees.  We are very thankful that heat rises.

They had enough of being outside

Bailey wondering where everyone was going

Just when I was feeling like my day was under control I was brought back to reality!  Oh well.  I am just thankful for wonderful people who are willing to drive to my house on a Monday night (when they probably had more exciting plans) to make sure the boys and I would have heat overnight!